Twenty years and a week ago, my wife, son and unborn daughter spent 5 hours at WTC. When you get somewhere hard with a toddler, you stay for a while, especially when you started in midtown at the Empire State Building, but could not go up. 1993 did not seem distant then, and I droned on about that day in college in Pennsylvania, when students I was with from northern NJ and Long Island had just heard of the garage bombing at the center, some with parents there, and to be honest, unfortunately, about 2 hours worth of what an absolutely enormous target this entire complex was.
We ate, took pictures everywhere, watched the tilting platform movie, pressed souvenir pennies, went to the top, talked to the employees and watched birthday flowers being delivered up the escalator to one of them, and that’s what we first thought about on the morning of 9/11, wondering how early work started up there.
By the evening of 9/11, I knew the world was different, and always would be. I drove the several miles to DFW, where we’d always watched planes with Royse, and took pictures of what it looks like when every commercial plane in the sky is suddenly grounded, while the sun still sets as lovely as ever in north Texas, as if nothing had happened.
In all the years that have gone by, families like mine eventually travelled again, grew up and recognized at least once a year, the magnitude of the events of that day. Some think about it all the time and became more vigilant, and that is certainly, I hope, good.
Other families were directly involved daily in preventing terrorism from coming home again. Thousands of families lost relatives that day, and many more in the years after. I came to learn what it meant to have been alive 30 years before I was born, when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
I don’t have a political comment coming, related to the long war winding down. I am simply respectful in remembrance of the terribly solemn and wide-ranging losses that such a relatively small group of individuals has caused, on so many. I don’t take for granted the blessing that my family has been able to live and safely so, with all the rights and liberties we have always fought for in America.
We ate, took pictures everywhere, watched the tilting platform movie, pressed souvenir pennies, went to the top, talked to the employees and watched birthday flowers being delivered up the escalator to one of them, and that’s what we first thought about on the morning of 9/11, wondering how early work started up there.
By the evening of 9/11, I knew the world was different, and always would be. I drove the several miles to DFW, where we’d always watched planes with Royse, and took pictures of what it looks like when every commercial plane in the sky is suddenly grounded, while the sun still sets as lovely as ever in north Texas, as if nothing had happened.
In all the years that have gone by, families like mine eventually travelled again, grew up and recognized at least once a year, the magnitude of the events of that day. Some think about it all the time and became more vigilant, and that is certainly, I hope, good.
Other families were directly involved daily in preventing terrorism from coming home again. Thousands of families lost relatives that day, and many more in the years after. I came to learn what it meant to have been alive 30 years before I was born, when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
I don’t have a political comment coming, related to the long war winding down. I am simply respectful in remembrance of the terribly solemn and wide-ranging losses that such a relatively small group of individuals has caused, on so many. I don’t take for granted the blessing that my family has been able to live and safely so, with all the rights and liberties we have always fought for in America.
Attachments
Last edited:
